NUMERICAL INVESTIGATIONS OF THE FLEXIBILITY OF INTRAVASCULAR BRAIDED STENT

Braided stents are commonly used to treat cerebral aneurysm, but there is little information about the bending characteristic of braided stent used for cerebral aneurysm. This paper investigates how geometrical parameters of braided stent influence its flexibility. Eight groups of braided stent models with different geometries (i.e., nominal diameter, length, braiding angle, number of wires, diameter of wire, frictional coefficient among wires and porosity) were constructed. Parametric analyses of these models were carried out by using Abaqus/Explicit. When the nominal diameter varied from 2mm to 5.5mm, the forces required for flexural deformation decrease from 2.64E−04N to 1.06E−04N; when the axial length varied from 10mm to 40mm, the forces required for flexural deformation decrease from 2.16E−04N to 4.38E−05N; when the braiding angle increases from 30∘ to 75∘ (the number of wires is 48 and the diameter of the wire is 0.026mm), the forces required for bending deformation decrease from 2.3E−03N to 2.4E−0...